AMD acquiring Fei-Fei Li's World Labs AI firm in deal worth $8.2 billion

AMD announced on Monday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire World Labs, a San Francisco-based AI lab developing a kind of model called a world model, which can be used to simulate 3D environments.

AMD said on Monday that the lab was acquired for about $8.2 billion in an all-stock transaction. The chipmaker had previously invested in World Labs.

AI researchers hope that world models can help develop robots and other physically-grounded artificial intelligence applications. AMD plans to keep World Labs separate from its chipmaking business until the transaction closes later this year.

Going forward, the lab's research on next-generation models will allow AMD to plan for what its AI chips need to be capable of years in advanced.

World Labs was founded by AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, who is widely seen as an AI pioneer as a Stanford professor, and who previously worked for Google leading AI research.

Li will become AMD's chief scientist and an executive vice president.

In a demo presented by Li and AMD CEO Lisa Su earlier this year, the two executives showed a World Labs called Marble creating a three-dimensional scene out of a few images.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.